ABSTRACT
I play in a casual summer golf league that is as much about beer-drinking banter as it is about hitting a golf ball. We don’t generally talk about work. But one day Gregg, a fellow golfer, asked me, “Hey Andy, what do you do for a living anyway?” I told him that I was a professor and that I studied environmental issues. He asked, “Do you mean like climate change? That’s not real, is it?” I told him that the science was quite compelling and that I believed that the issue was real. His next question was, “Are you a Democrat or a Republican?” I told him that I was an independent. He replied, “So what do you think about Al Gore?” I told him that I thought Gore had called needed attention to climate change but that perceptions of him unfortunately also helped to polarize it as a partisan issue.
